Free Winter Run by Robert Ashcom Page B

cattle guard above the lake no words were needed.
    Because there it was. Just on the other side of the head of the lake, five hundred yards away from us. It was like being in church, but here you could see it. The fire looked alive and the noise was like a living thing speaking in tongues about its hunger and need for movement. The fire line was about a quarter of a mile wide, in a mature stand of field pines. A gentle southwest breeze was easing it steadily toward us and the fifty-acre broom sage field with the five-acre hog lot in the middle—with seven sows and a boar in it that summer. The summerhouses were to the north-northeast at the top of the hill, to our right, and the Corn House was straight ahead of the fire to the northeast over one hill behind where we were standing. Silver Hill was off to the east on the hill above the Corn House.
    “What you think, Mr. Lewis? Better get Miz Lewis up to the big house. Something got to give here. Corn House. Big house. Summerhouses. At least one going to go. Maybe all of ’em. And the hogs. We going to lose them sure.” He was almost breathless.
    Then silence. Nothing but the fire and my father looking at it from under his dark brows. Then he slowly turned to Matthew and spoke in a voice entirelynew to me. Slow, deliberate, and sure. Like a person walking a hazardous path for the twentieth time. Dangerous but sure.
    “Go get Gretchen, Matthew. Take her to the big house. Then go to the village and get everyone you see and tell them all to go home and get a hard rake and a shovel. Tell them to leave their trucks behind the big house and come on foot from there. No use burning up half the trucks in the village if this thing gets away from us. Is Leonard’s team in the pasture behind the big house? Get him to hook to the plow and come on. Ask Mr. Dudley to call the forestry people. They could bring a truckload of shovels and rakes, if nothing else.” There was a pause. “That’s it … No. Bring a couple of bucksaws, too.”
    He sounded like he was reading from a list, doing a daily procedure—my father who was always away on business during the week and was an outlander, my shy father who was often unsure around the people of the village. There was a small smile on his dark face.
    Matthew took off.
    “Is there a gap in this end of the hog lot, Charlie?”
    “Yes sir, but it’s hard to get open.”
    “Let’s go.”
    We trotted down the hill. In a hurry, but not rushing. We got it open.
    “Don’t we have to run the hogs out, Daddy?”
    “No, when that fire gets closer, the hogs will come out of there on their own. They’ll be all right. But Godknows where they’ll end up. Matthew will know what to do about them.”
    At the summerhouse lane we stopped. He looked up and down figuring, talking his plan out loud. The lane was where he would try to stop the fire, using the lane as a break, but there were problems. The locust and cedar trees along the lane might catch and let the fire jump across. It all depended on how fast he got help and what the wind did. Of course, at the time I couldn’t tell if he was talking to
me.
All I knew was that the fire had transformed my father into someone new to me. To a little kid, he was like a wizard peering out from under his brows, sometimes shading his eyes with his hand and squinting to get a better view, looking into the distance, although the fire was only five hundred yards away.
    The breeze had all but stopped. The fire died down because now it had to move without the wind. It still looked alive, but resting, preparing for the future. It was waiting for something. It was waiting for the wind.
    The professor arrived, out of breath. He looked at my father and saw the change in him and said, “Is there anything I can do, Charles? Gretchen is with us. I wouldn’t be much help here what with my asthma … You know my family has lived in that house for 126 years. I would hate to lose it.” Looking up at my father with a wistful